Tuesday, 27 December 2016

When Criticism Is A Crime.

The state’s survival is dependent on submissiveness and control, hence it will always try to find ways and means of stifling any form of dissent. Anarchist philosophy is based on the creating a state free society, so naturally it goes without saying, anarchist will always be at the sharp end of that state repression. In countries across the globe, anarchist autonomous centres are evicted and trashed, their papers closed down, and in many cases, the supporters imprisoned on trumped up charges. I have always seen Turkey as an extremely repressive state, more so than some of the others in the West. Many years ago I was involved in a campaign in support of a Kurdish lawyer in Turkey, who had been imprisoned for ten years, his crime, editing a Kurdish language magazine in Turkey, the Kurdish language, at that time, being banned in Turkey. Today in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey things have deteriorated much further down the repression route. Journalists are detained at the slightest hint of criticism of the Turkish state, radio stations are closed if they don’t shower the state and its psychopathic leader with praise. Now they have gone one step further, you don’t have to criticise the Turkish state, you can find yourself in prison if you dare to write an article in support of people in another country struggling to build democracy. This is the nature of the beast, “the state”, they are all dependent on your acceptance of their monopoly on power. Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, will point to regimes in other lands and label them “repressive”, despotic” and “undemocratic” but they are all just different flavours of the same poison. The state is an authoritarian edifice that will die if the people grasp their freedom, and freedom will die of we allow the state to flourish. This from Freedom Press:

Meydan issue 30.

The
editor of Meydan Gazette in Istanbul was jailed for a year and three
months on December 22nd for “propagandising the methods of a terror
organisation” in a free-speech case which dragged on for nearly a year.

Hüseyin Civan and the Gazette were taken to court after an
investigation by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor over a December
2015 issue of the paper, which has supported Kurdish revolutionaries
fighting in Rojava. The three offending articles were titled “Both
Arrival and Departure of State is From Fear” “Banned Until Further
Notice” and “Recreating Life.”

Representing the Gazette and Civan, lawyer Davut Erkan stated that the
decision was illegal and would be appealed, if necessary, all the way to
the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights. In a statement Meydan, which is based just a few streets away from Gezi Park, said:

Our
managing editor was charged with “propagandising for the methods of a
terrorist organisation employing coercion, violence or threats, through
legitimising, praising or encouraging the use of these methods.”
As we emphasised in articles leading up to the investigation, the “State
will never be able to lock away the passion and conviction for freedom
of the peoples.”
As an anarchist newspaper we know that the free life we believe in can
only be created through struggle. We will never give up writing about
what we stand for and distributing what we write. We will continue to
resist, act and write against oppression, and against these
investigations, custodies and arrests.

Journalists have been heavily targeted in the Erdogan government’s post-coup
crackdown, which has been heavily skewed against pro-Kurdish media. In
October the left-wing Hayatin Sesi TV station was closed along with 24
other TV and radio stations, and hundreds of reporters have been detained, inspiring even some MPs to attempt civil disobedience in protest.
The draconian measures have even stretched beyond Turkey’s borders, with
the issuing of a red alert to Interpol for well-known Turkish-French
journalist Maxime Azadi, who was picked up by Belgian authorities for alleged “co-operation” with terrorists on a year-old warrant on December 23rd.